Open Source Ethics in Software
10 May 2023
Processing Software Development in Software Engineering
For Software Development, from analyzing to deploying and maintaining. I believe open-source web software is developed to promote collaboration, transparency, innovation, learning, and social impact. It allows developers and users to contribute, customize and benefit from software that is accessible, reliable, and constantly evolving. And while open source projects allow for better development and maintenance of projects, it’s a great way to improve the quality of one’s code and help monitor and regulate your code writing. So back to developing software, I have the privilege of using Meteor for web software development. Meteor includes the MVC design pattern, a reusable solution to common architectural and design problems during development. And it provides a shared language and vocabulary among developers, making it easier to communicate and understand complex design concepts. And the MVC design pattern helps construct better code organization, maintainability, and testability using three components: models (data and logic), views (user interface), and controllers (handle user input and update models and pictures). But before bringing in design patterns, we need to understand and analyze the requirements for developing software, i.e., analyze the use and functionality of web software. Next, establish the plan and general design, including the web software’s available UI and UI style. From there, planning for software scalability, security, performance, etc., can be carried out. Then you can start setting up the development environment, such as choosing an IDE (Intellij), installing a web server (Node.js), and choosing a suitable database server (MongoDB). Next, you can use GitHub to configure the software version control system, which is used to manage better and maintain the software development process. And finally, the installation and testing of software dependencies, such as installing Meteor and other plug-ins and libraries suitable for the software.
But open source software development, in general, usually refers to the collaborative development of a project in an open and transparent platform or community. Therefore, the open-source software development process in the previous section is better for defining development’s meaning and general understanding. It also greatly helps to understand the analysis and learning of software engineering ethics afterward.
Ethical Considerations of Open Source Software Development
While open-source software development is usually associated with the principles of openness, collaboration, and transparency, the other hand, software engineering also requires ethical consideration of the ethical principles and values that underlie the behavior of software developers in their professional practice. It includes privacy, security, accountability, and social responsibility issues. Many open-source projects also incorporate ethical considerations into their development process, such as ensuring user privacy and security and avoiding proprietary technologies that may restrict user freedom. From there, we begin our discussion of the ethics of software development by looking at several ethical theories, such as moral egoism, Kantianism, behavioral utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, social contract theory, and virtue ethics, among others. Three of the most focused approaches are selected to correspond to the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: From a Kantian perspective, software engineers should adhere to ethical principles such as honesty, respect for the rights of others (including intellectual property), and the obligation to fulfill professional duties. Open source software development conforms to Cantren by promoting transparency, respecting the rights of others to access and modify software, and fulfilling the obligation to provide high-quality code and documentation; from a practical behavioral perspective, developers can strive to create software that provides the most excellent utility to the most significant number of people, taking into account factors such as user experience, security, and social impact. And finally, virtue ethics would encourage developers to cultivate the virtues of honesty, integrity, empathy, and diligence. Open-source software development provides opportunities for a virtue ethic by promoting collaboration, sharing knowledge, and striving for excellence in code quality. And these three are just three different ethical perspectives alone to provide distance and influence between developers and users. But the ethics of pairs in software development are usually, in the case of the software my group and I develop. We need personal information such as course data of cell phone users and email names to help users use the software. The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct does not explicitly require this. However, we need to be fair and open to help users understand the reason and purpose of collecting data more transparently. And finally, the most important thing is that the goal of the software itself is to maximize the benefits to both the user and the developer.